


The Stars Upon Your Back

by Vulpesmellifera



Series: Imperfections Can Be Loved [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Astronomy, John apologizes, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:22:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulpesmellifera/pseuds/Vulpesmellifera
Summary: Sherlock prefers shadows to sunlight, his coat collar popped and his scarf wrapped about his neck like a hug. He wears bespoke because he’s trim, but he prefers to feel covered, and wears the dressing gown more often than not.The first time John Watson kisses him, he’s stricken.Sherlock Holmes is painfully aware of his ugly parts and his failures when it comes to John Watson.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Imperfections Can Be Loved [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564927
Comments: 77
Kudos: 401





	The Stars Upon Your Back

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to notjustmum and ReynardinePotter for the beta. <3

Sherlock prefers shadows to sunlight, his coat collar popped and his scarf wrapped about his neck like a hug. He wears bespoke because he’s trim, but he prefers to feel covered, and wears the dressing gown more often than not. 

The first time John Watson kisses him, he’s stricken. The warm press of lips, the weight of hands on his biceps, the sensation overload - his brain begins an immediate refiling and defragging on his system, because nowhere in his predictions was ‘John Watson kisses me.’ Error. File not found. 

“Oh, there you are? Have you come back to me, then?” John says, the lines of his face creased in a mixture of worry and amusement. “You did that thing again.”

“It’s...” John Watson had loved Sherlock Holmes once. Before the Fall, before assassin wives and gunshot wounds and widowhood and single parenthood. Sherlock had flung himself like a comet through the sky to save this man, only to crash, burn, and form into a cold piece of meteorite. 

He learned about meteorites while he was away, hoping one day to impress John with his knowledge of astronomy. There’s been no chance to tell him.

“It’s very bright in here.” _You are the sun._

John laughs. “Are you...are you going to say something? About the-” he swallows “- kiss?”

Sherlock’s head drops, chin to chest. “I liked it.”

John makes a rumbling noise in his throat. “Then, I can do it again?”

Sherlock nods.

They kiss and they kiss and they kiss until near morning. They’ll need sleep before Rosie wakes.

Sherlock likes John in his bed. They go slow, in the dark. It’s different from concrete and chains - he’s been there with the dark. But the dark isn’t a place he fears. It’s his friend - like black holes in space. It hides things. 

As John slides hands around the edges of clothing, Sherlock stiffens. 

“We’ll go slow,” John says as he removes his hands. Sherlock craves the feel of John’s hands on his body. He wants the sensation of touch - he wants to feel loved. It’s impossible for John to love him, but he wants it to feel like he does. This is the problem with sex, that sex can feel like love and it is dangerous to conflate the two. 

So he settles for kissing, and they kiss and whisper and nuzzle for hours. 

It’s befuddling. There is Before the Fall and After the Fall. Before the Fall John could ignore his strange face and his too-big moles and love him for his brain, for the adventure, the siren song of a chase and the thrill of living, of not just surviving but of thriving. John dated, but he had eyes and a heart for Sherlock. It never took long to shake off a potential partner. 

After the Fall John is different. Quick to anger. Passionate in ways Before the Fall John wasn’t. Tired. He doesn’t call Sherlock “amazing” - he simply expects Sherlock to perform. “The game is on! Solve it!” he said to save Major Sholto. So Sherlock performed. And saved John’s first...whatever. 

After the Fall John is sadder. He stares off into the distance, his face a study in worry and shadows. Sometimes, Sherlock thinks about bringing up his astronomy knowledge then. Point out constellations and planets and all the other rot John thinks is so important.

 _Suppose if you’re the sun, you might think it important._ Sherlock is the dark matter (or the black hole), and obviously astronomy used to matter little to him, except to follow the threads of light to lay bare the truth.

They kiss with the lights off. When Sherlock finally decides his clothes can come off, this is when the darkness is his friend again. 

“I want to see you,” John says, flushed and breathing hard.

Sherlock winks at him from where he stands, by the light switch. “I prefer the mystery,” he says, and flips the switch to off. He tackles John to the bed.

Laughing, John forgets, and soon, Sherlock’s shirt is unbuttoned and removed. Sherlock lays his back against the mattress. John kisses down his neck - _moles_ \- tongues down his chest - _bullet scar_ \- and licks along his stomach - _flab._ There are no complaints, but then John has never been very observant. 

The light will show his imperfections. The light will reveal his failures. The light will lay bare the truth - that Sherlock is not the man he once was, and John will remember that he doesn’t love Sherlock.

The nights pass this way, the two exploring each other’s bodies. Sherlock will sense when John wishes to touch his back, and he’s careful to manoeuver John such that his searching fingers and probing tongue will never find the worst of the scarring. When John comes across one once, he pauses. Before he can remark on it, Sherlock says, “Moles. Sorry, a bit off putting I know.” John laughs at that and kisses him and it’s forgotten. 

After their intercourse, Sherlock makes a habit of entering the bathroom by himself to dress in his t-shirt and pyjamas. John’s offered to take a shower with him, but Sherlock puts him off with a pretension at a very regimented shower routine that benefits the Work. 

It isn’t long before one night, post-case adrenaline rush and a celebratory glass of wine, that Sherlock drifts to sleep before he dresses. 

He wakes to the broad light of day, unbidden and unwanted, in his room. 

He can feel John’s eyes on him. Sense him sitting up and examining him with an army doctor’s eyes. He tenses.

“I thought you were just shy,” John says in a small voice.

Sherlock feels the fight slip from him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know.”

“Why not?” The pitch of his voice informs Sherlock that John is hurt. 

Sherlock pushes himself up on his elbows, as he faces his pillow.

“I didn’t want - to concern you. And...there was a time when things were well between us.” It feels like his mouth is full of cotton. “Before the Fall, I think you could have loved me. Now? I am a different man, and you’re a different man. You’re here in my bed, despite...everything. I didn’t want to give you cause to leave when you saw...when you saw.” He peers out of the corner of his eye at John.

Who stares. And stares, his mouth half open and his eyes filled with distress. 

Sherlock starts to lift himself out of bed, but John grabs his shoulder. “Stop,” he says in a rough voice. “Wait.”

Sherlock stills, propped on his knees and hands, sheet hung half over his torso. John slides closer to him, makes him sit back on his calves as John kneels before him, their faces a foot away from each other.

“I don’t know exactly what you mean...by that. You are the most beautiful- ,“ he pauses, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. Then shakes his head and keeps going, “-and maddening man I have ever met in my life. “ John reaches up and touches Sherlock’s face with one hand and his shoulder with the other. The pad of his forefinger trails along his left cheekbone. “Before the Fall I was a jealous man. I didn’t think you’d have anyone. Then along came Irene, and I-I realised you might have someone. I was a broken person back then, Sherlock. And I’m a broken person, now, in other ways.”

“No.” Sherlock won’t let John believe this. “ _No_. You are the sun. You give off light.” His eyes drift to the wall. “But like any foolish Icarus, one can get too close and get burned. Fall and drown in the sea.”

“You didn’t delete Greek mythology?”

Sherlock takes John’s hands in his, his eyes intent on John’s. “There is a lot of Greek and Roman mythology to be found in the stars, John. I’d like to show you sometime. Take you outside of London if we must. Light pollution, you know.” 

Then it occurs to him that he’d never quite thought of it that way. 

That even light can obscure the truth.

It’s more complicated than he’d thought.

John interrupts his train of thought. “You’d like to show me?”

 _Yes._ “I’d like to show you the stars. I know the constellations, how they came to be named, the order of the planets as well as their moons, and I know about black holes and comets and galaxies and binary stars and supernovas-“

“When did you learn all that?” He seems on the verge of smiling.

“When I was away,” Sherlock says, and winces at John's sober expression.

“And the scars?”

Sherlock pokes his tongue into his cheek, considering, and then nods. 

“Will you tell me?”

“It’s not so beautiful as the stars.” His body sags to think of having to tell John about his slip in brilliance that lead to his capture. 

“I don’t know. Some of the marks sort of reminded me of constellations.”

Sherlock snorts with disbelief. 

John touches the scar of the bullet wound. “This one I regret badly. I’m sorry.”

Sherlock squeezes his other hand. “It was one of many things that brought us here.” He reaches his hand up to John’s own scar. “Like this one.”

John takes his hand and kisses the tips of his fingers. He then kisses two of his own fingers and presses them to the scar on Sherlock’s chest.

Sherlock’s heart stutters.

John cups his face and pulls him closer, and then he kisses Sherlock’s eyebrow. “I’m sorry for that one, too.” His voice is low, self-flagellating.

Something lodges in Sherlock’s throat. He has to swallow around it as John slowly turns him around, and lays him down on the bed. He kisses the top of Sherlock’s scapula. “I’m sorry someone did this to you.” He continues on, kissing the thin lines of whip marks, the pocks of cigarette burns, he apologizes and kisses and then he ends at Sherlock’s left ear where he says, “I love you.”

Sherlock knows his eyes are wet as his body sings with an exquisite pain, the embers of a love thought lost and a new love found and the sensation of being loved, of being seen and still desired. John Watson After the Fall still loves Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock Holmes…

“I love you,” he says, into the beam of light.


End file.
